WASHINGTON, Nov 23, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The harvesting was wrapping up across much of the United States this week although rain across Texas and the South kept the cotton harvest behind schedule. The Agriculture Department's weekly crop report said Tuesday the cotton harvest was 72 percent complete compared to the 5-year average of 80 percent. Heavy rain did not halt field work but caused some degrading of the quality. Nevertheless, New York cotton futures were trading about 44 points lower Tuesday. Live cattle futures were up sharply on concerns about mad cow disease and stress on...

Montezuma -- At this time of year, like every fall before, Frank Journey Jr. expects to reap the fruits of his labor, sweat and love. The sowing of cotton seeds each March heralds the start of another planting season. It's an annual rite of spring that transforms the 63-acre Journey family farm into lush summer pastures of green. Summer, of course, gives way to the fall harvest, when Journey, like his father and grandfather before him, collects the white tufts of cotton that blanket the fields. It's a well-worn tradition observed by generations of cotton farmers in Montezuma and surrounding...

GENEVA — Brazil's emphatic win over the United States in a key trade ruling over cotton will send shock waves through world trade talks and embolden those demanding all farm subsidies be slashed, analysts said on Tuesday. The Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), in a confidential decision, told Washington to halt much of the lavish aid it gives the country's some 25,000 cotton farmers, ruling it illegal, sources close to the ruling said. The decision goes to the heart of the debate at troubled WTO negotiations to reform world farm trade, where angry poorer countries argue the massive subsidy schemes...

Condemned Dallas carjacker set to die Thursday07:10 AM CST on Thursday, March 4, 2004Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Frank Meziere had watched a Dallas Mavericks basketball game at a restaurant with a friend and before heading home stopped at a self-service car wash to clean his black Mustang convertible. The 23-year-old Plano stockbroker, a 1996 Texas A&M University graduate, never made it home. His body was found the next day, March 26, 1998, along the side of a road in an industrial area of Oak Cliff, an area of south Dallas. He had been shot in the head 10 times....

HUNTSVILLE - After trying to console his mother, convicted killer Marcus Cotton was executed Wednesday evening for the fatal shooting of a Houston-area assistant district attorney during a robbery attempt 7 1/2 years ago. "Well, Mom, sometimes it works out like this," Cotton said from the death chamber gurney as his mother, who was among the witnesses, watched through a window. "When you are dealing with reality, real is not always what you want it to be." Cotton, 29, a native of the Houston suburb of Missouri City, told his relatives to take care of themselves and that he loved...

Ricardo Sanchez rose from poverty in Starr County to become an Army general RIO GRANDE CITY - When Ricardo Sanchez was 13, he and an older brother told his mother they didn't want to go to school anymore. OK, she said. They could pick cotton instead. "I woke them up at 5 in the morning and sent them off in one of the trucks," said Maria Sanchez, the 77-year-old mother of the highest-ranking military official in Iraq. "They came home and they were very tired, but I just gave them some dinner and told them, 'Go to bed because tomorrow...

During a cross-country drive in July 1989, my car broke down in the Arizona desert sometime around noon. My cat, Miles, who had long, black fur, was not pleased. I managed to find a phone and call a tow truck, and during the long, slow, non-air-conditioned ride to the nearest service station, with Miles panting at my side, I had plenty of time to take in the scenery: row after row of cotton. Since cotton is a water-intensive crop, the middle of a desert seemed a strange place to grow it. Similar oddities can be observed in other arid areas...

During a cross-country drive in July 1989, my car broke down in the Arizona desert sometime around noon. My cat, Miles, who had long, black fur, was not pleased. I managed to find a phone and call a tow truck, and during the long, slow, non-air-conditioned ride to the nearest service station, with Miles panting at my side, I had plenty of time to take in the scenery: row after row of cotton. Since cotton is a water-intensive crop, the middle of a desert seemed a strange place to grow it. Similar oddities can be observed in other arid areas...

Cotton losses staggering on High Plains BY MARY JANE SHORT AVALANCHE-JOURNAL The amount of High Plains cotton acreage lost to adverse weather has sailed past the 1 million mark with counties north of Lubbock hit hardest by the wipeout, recent estimates from Texas Cooperative Extension and Plains Cotton Growers show. Experts say that of 3.6 million acres planted, about 1.18 million have been lost, almost a third of cotton acreage in PCG's 25-county area. Counties sustaining the big gest losses include Bailey, Coch ran, Deaf Smith, Floyd, Lamb and Parmer. All report a 70 percent or greater acreage loss. Earlier...

From hip-hopper to sharecropper Sean Combs His hip-hop majesty Sean Combs wants to pick cotton. The Bad Boy Records boss has been cast to play Delta blues legend Robert Johnson in the HBO movie "Love in Vain." Wasting no time prepping for the part, he's learning some guitar licks. "I tried playing it when I was young," Combs tells us. He's also looking forward to heading down South - where, before he died in 1938 at the age of 27, the vagabond Johnson is said to have made a pact with the devil, who promised to make him the greatest...

Fearless Flyers Kites has shut down production and needs help finding new supplyers After a life time of designing and creating custom hand painted kites Fearless Flyers Kite Company has shut down production due to an inability to find conservative supplyers. Fearless Flyers makes tie dye cotton and hand painted silk kites. This is a one man operation, that has unfortunately been acquiring materials from Dharma Trading Company. The vendor appears to be in the same district as Berkeley California and supports the same ideals, as discovered when an enquiry was made with two different sales people, during the last...